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Provider consumer engagement: A personalized approach

Value-based health care, health care consumerism and technological advances are redefining the health care value chain. As a result provider organizations need to place an emphasis on personalized engagement strategies to enhance patient satisfaction, change individuals’ behaviors and improve population health.

Patient satisfaction: Innovative engagement models that make it easy for an individual to navigate the system and access patient-centered care can be a critical ingredient in improving patient satisfaction. When patients are satisfied with the service and care they receive it drives consumer loyalty and can help providers increase revenue. In addition, patient satisfaction scores are fundamental quality measurements in many value-based reimbursement models.

Behavior change: Individual behavior change is key for any provider organization entering into a value-based agreement, as studies show that half of health care costs are associated with an individual’s lifestyle choices. Creating personalized strategies to enhance commitment and motivation to change behavior can improve an individual’s overall health, resulting in lower health care costs.

Population health: Programs that empower and engage individuals in their own health and health care deliver both short-term and long-term value to the provider. Population health programs that are personalized based on an individual’s needs and activation level are the most successful.

As they focus on these three areas, providers will need to gather consumer information on demographics, literacy, lifestyle, care history and activation levels. As technology and behavioral science advance, this information can help provider organizations define consumer and patient segments in order to personalize care and services.

This personalized approach can help providers increase market share, boost quality and improve population health. And, ultimately, this can enhance their profitability and revenue in the new health care market.

3 thoughts on “Provider consumer engagement: A personalized approach”

In my opinion, this article is focusing on the true hurdles associated with value based solutions. All the techno gadgets in the world will not effect behavior change without the person’s commitment. I say person instead of patient because we need a daily lifestyle modification, not a well visit every 6 months with a pat on the back and “go get ’em” speech that seems to be the current modification effort.
The reimbursements for preventative care and lifestyle modifications in members need to be rewarded both financially and through moral support. Primary Care Physicians are too busy, but I believe real change can occur by behavior changes that save $ long term.
I think we should stop focusing on the 20 million dollar EMR implementation that helps us collectively watch someone get sicker and allocate significant funds and innovations to prevention/behavior change. We should also reward innovation outside of technology that results in a higher percentage of healthy behavior modification.

I agree that investments in baseline health care technology infrastructure do not focus on empowering individuals or changing an individual’s behavior, but rather capture medical and clinical documents. But some of this medical and clinical information can be leveraged to support consumer segmentation that can personalize behavioral change approaches. I also agree that we cannot continue to ask PCPs to shoulder all the accountability to treat an individual and change his or her behavior.

In my experience successful programs that positively impact an individual’s behavior are approaches that:
• Start with an understanding of the stages of change and where an individual is at a point in time
• Create customized approaches based on the individuals’ needs – not just based on their stage of change
• Use alternative resources to engage an individual, such as nutritionists, health advocates and community resources
• Use individuals with the same experiences that share and support individuals in their change journey
• Use different channels based on the individual’s choice, including one-on-one approaches, group visits and online programs
–Cynthia Kilroy

In our experience, the key is the skill and positive determination of the Care Coordinator. If the dialogue starts with, “I’m from the insurance company and I’m here to help you”, then the dialogue won’t be too successful.

But if it starts with, ” Your employer has contracted with us so we can give you a benefit that perhaps you didn’t know you have. Though your employer has contracted with us, the communications between you and I, as a third party, will never be revealed to your Employer. If you log-on to ” new member portal” then we can start from there. This service is at no cost to you. etc, etc,